The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done

1

This Isn’t My House and You Aren’t My Parents

1My name is Chrysalis Moffat.

1.1I was born in Peru.

1.2When I was three, I was brought to the United States.

1.3Here I was adopted by rich white people.

1.4Insofar as that is possible, I became just like them.

2I am brown, and my face looks like a South American mask because my parents were South American Indians.

2.1My body, too, is foreshortened, plump; next to Anglos, I look rudimentary.

2.2PC people make a point of saying I’m beautiful, even to my face.

3Although I am so brown, I give an impression of whiteness.

3.1People often remember me wearing white clothes when I was not wearing white clothes.

3.2They also think my surname is White.

3.3It’s a supernatural phenomenon, I think.

4My father gave me the name, Chrysalis.

4.1He was a biochemist.

Discuss

No one in my family is interesting or praiseworthy; only my father. Born in rural poverty to alcoholic parents, he worked his way through Berkeley, received his PhD and was expected to have a brilliant research career in microbiology. Instead of pursuing it, however, he volunteered for Vietnam.

My father fought in Vietnam for four years.

Although he would refer to the evils of that war, this was more polite, I believe, than sincere. Nor did he seem – though this must surely have been the case – to have fallen in love with jungles, technicolor murder, freewheelingness – to love the smell of napalm in the morning. In all he did, he was rather the simple, honest man. He was, pre-eminently, a man who loved dogs.

He got down on the floor and rolled with dogs; he swung children around and around by the hands, playing airplane. Mom and Dad were always laughing behind their bedroom door, when we were very small.

You got the sense that, when all else failed and the world had weakened utterly, succumbing to corruption and mean-spirited trivia, still there would be Father, taller than everyone else and irreducibly blond.

He looked like John Wayne.

5On the drive to my Uncle Jerry’s, we used to pass my father’s work.

5.1It was called BSI: Something Something Institute.

5.2It had a chicken-wire fence and a checkpoint hut with an orange barrier.

5.3No buildings were visible from the road, only set-piece maples.

5.4Eddie and I would try to get the guard to wave.

5.5Mom would sing out; Hello, Bull Shit Incorporated!

6Early on, we realized there was something about Dad’s work.

6.1He was always going to Chile or Guatemala, conducting studies.

6.2We couldn’t know what he studied; that was a state secret.

6.3The date of his return was likewise secret.

6.4Where in Chile too.

FATHER: ELEMENTARY

Asoldierly, upright:

he strode, and grinned, and gave

manly firm handshakes.

A is for Astronaut, like them,

like many Army men, he was

Bpermanently boyish,

brash, bluff, broad-shouldered

like a B-movie hero.

Or,

just,

BIG.

Moving on to

Che was a cowboy.

A cracker born in Cody, Texas.

Howdy, podner, I’m headin’ out t’the corral, he’d go, corny for us kids.

We’d cackle,

cry, capsize

curl up with glee

because he was never there.

Conspicuous by his absence.

Comin’ home real soon, chicken –

DNow he’s dead.

But these big heads that watch over our childish night skies, a nightlight left on to the end of time in a darkened bedroom;

indecipherable and throbbing

nauseous

headachey

with its lolling top-heavy heap of cheap significance.

AT THE DINNER TABLE: 1977

Dad looks like John Wayne. He has grown his hair out of its familiar crewcut and dyed it black to stop the women in Peru asking him for autographs. People in Peru don’t know John Wayne is old. Those movies are all brand new there.

Mom is laughing and laughing. Dad sits up with his hands folded. I think he looks very fair, like when Eddie and I fight and Dad makes us sit down in court and come to a settlement. Next to me, Eddie is making faces because we haven’t had dessert yet and he knows there’s chocolate chip ice cream.

I’d kill to have been there, Mom crows, the ladies in their ponchos mobbing the shady operative – Señor Wayne! Señor Wayne! Then she does my father, talking into his wristwatch; Operation Kookamunga, abort!

Lannie, says Dad, I am not a shady operative.

Señor Wayne! I see all jour movies!

Lannie. Nobody’s laughing.

Laughing? It’s an effing laugh riot!

Mom starts coughing and finally looks in her lap, distracted. Eddie pipes up:

Mom? Are we having ice cream? I can get it, I can reach.

Just one minute, Eddie, honestly.

And cause it’s the dinner table, Mom has her tequila glass to hand, to grab to her mouth and her head bucks

chucks it down hard

two-handed, one

palm spread over the glass bottom to shove the liquor home

and hold the dry glass for a moment, leaving it time to shine and be seen:

2

This Isn’t My House and You’re Not My Children

1My mother was an art historian.

1.1That’s what she put on forms.

1.2And she held a Master’s in art history from Berkeley.

2Really she was just rich.

3It was family money.

3.1Her father had made a killing in real estate.

3.2Pictures of his suburban developments hung in the dining room when she was a child.

3.3My mother used to think he built the houses himself.

4Her family were rich people all day long.

4.1They held their children as if they were vases; the dog was groomed by a company.

4.2Salad fork for salad, full dress for breakfast.

4.3They were, in these respects, profoundly, paranoiacally, arriviste.

5My mother was just, common.

•She was never persuaded to like shoes.

•Her knees were skinned, somehow. From her clothes, you knew she had a dog.

•She always looked as if she had just washed her face.

6Girls who wore makeup were weak, according to my mother.

STORY

When she turned eighteen, my mother’s birthday present was a mansion. It was strategically chosen for its location on a dull stretch of California coast. Her father thought the town to be ripe for development. A gift, then, bought in my mother’s name for tax reasons.

But I can’t even live in it, my mother squalled. I’m going to college, remember?

It’s an investment, said her father. For your future.

They had the hackneyed screaming match, in which father laid down the law and daughter wept; mother fretted, saying patient reasonable things.

Around them were the beautiful acquisitions – like a jury. High ceilings and marble and even the placid air with its scent of autumnal roses; my mother fought bitterly, at that age, against their sway.

I’m going to burn it down! she screamed finally. I’ll invite you all over and burn it down!

Her parents died in a car accident one year later.

She lived in that mansion for the rest of her life; Eddie and I grew up in it.

Her mother, Lily, who really was like a white funereal flower, and trembled, used to say that tomboys grew up to be the nicest big ladies.

Her father used to say, Lannie’s going to blow everything we’ve worked to save, you wait and see!

1After her parents’ death, she moved into her mansion.

1.1No one else lived there; there was no gardener, no maid. There was no furniture.

1.2The derelict guest wing leaked, and moss grew, demarcating the parquet.

1.3It was 35 rooms, two towers, a private beach, and a cultivated wood.

1.4In the wood, she found a pointy-eared white mutt she called Remember.

1.5They used to sleep together on the beach on summer nights.

2Her brother Jerry got away with the bulk of the family fortune.

2.1She hated him, she called him King Jerry, she was implacable.

2.2There were court cases all her life; she never forgot that money.

2.3The rest of the family backed him because my mother rode a motorcycle.

2.4She never forgave them either, though she attended polite family gatherings.

3When she was at Berkeley, she rode two hours to get to class.

3.1She was penniless.

3.2She sold all the mansion’s antique doors.

3.3She had three million dollars tied up in a lawsuit, but wouldn’t borrow in case the bank stole her house.

3.4When the money came through, she bought three cars.

4Her mattress on the floor was surrounded by cigarette butts.

4.1She’d taped cardboard over the broken windows on the ground floor.

4.2In the courtyard lawn, one of her boyfriends had dug his name.

4.3It brought tears to your eyes, my dad said, Lannie was such a slob.

For a while, he was only one of many rotating boyfriends. Then he put his foot down. He turned up at her house one weekend, wearing a suit, to say, Okay, Lannie. Now we’re going to buy furniture and then you’re going to marry me. I had about enough of this runaround.

He was standing on her cracked white step, in sunlight, bearing a sheaf of flowers. The engagement ring was hooked on the first joint of his pinky; a diamond solitaire she wouldn’t like. His stance was easy, friendly. They knew each other well; and he wanted, badly, to put the flowers down and touch her face.

She said, No!

But he was right.

Then he was in Vietnam.

Then he was in Chile at a secret destination, conducting studies.

For the rest of her life, my mother always had a mutt who would follow her down, down our private beach and out of sight, on summer nights.

BEGIN AGAIN

1When my parents married, they were both 21.

1.1They

•smoked marijuana

•drank

•rode her motorbike down to Baja

1.2When there was no party on the weekend, they threw one.

1.3Wet hair; sun-tender skin; sand in the toe of a canvas shoe.

2No one had seen anyone so much in love.

2.1They had inside jokes. She rode him piggyback to bed.

2.2Dad once broke a man’s nose for calling her a slut.

3He was doing his doctoral work.

4She bought art and sold it to friends of the family.

5There was always money; there were always friends; there were pre-booked tickets and dinner reservations.

5.1There was a little place with a patio where we used to have breakfast. I don’t think I cared then if the whole world exploded.

5.2People were different then. You did what was expected of you, even if it was no fun. You didn’t try to run the world.

Mother sat beside the pool and Father swam. We were not yet born, and Mother sat in her wet bikini bottoms on the concrete, and green light swam in tiger stripes in mimicry of the tiger stripes that swam down Father’s back in muscles as he swam;

it is water but it all comes to a point like the last note of a perfect rock anthem and

here you are kneeling on wet concrete with both hands thrust down into the water as if you could catch something

he goes off to his copters and jungles

Sergeant Doctor Jonathan Moffat

Jack, baby

She used to call him John Wayne

Sometimes when she gets into the car in the sun, for the minute while she waits for the plastic’s heat to mellow, she slackens and breathes on a sudden note of sexual excitement, shuts her eyes surprised

and smiles

as if she’s pulling out of a supermarket parking lot in Canada

as if he’s really here

Your head is bigger than my head

Your arms are bigger than my legs

Your hands are bigger than my breasts

You

got right

through me

man, so I

lost so much weight

I was so

I don’t know (She put her knuckles to her mouth, she put the phone receiver to her lips, the cold plastic and its holes

a nozzle

nuzzle the nozzle and

cry

baby

Are you ever really coming home

My father used to say, if he’d had any sense, he would have stayed and protested against the war. We had no concept what hell guys went through there. War is about death, he would say, always remember that. Death.

He liked to say these things because he was a decorated veteran. He said them at dinner to people who had not been to war.

It’s not something to envy, said my father. Not at all.

He said when we were grown up, there would never be any wars again. That’s what he was working for, and with God’s help, they’d get it licked.

The manner of his death was a state secret. No personnel attended his funeral, and Mom was advised not to advertise it in the paper. They buried an empty coffin. We saw Mom in a dress for the first time.

After that, often in the mornings we would find an uneven trench dug in the sand of our private beach. Mother had been out there pacing, and drinking, all night. Although it wasn’t his job, the gardener used to go down and clear the butts from this trench. He would even seem to try to fill it in again, shovelling with his boot tips. At such times, he looked sad in a private, Hispanic way, as if he realized that grief was something in the earth and it was vast and it would outlast him. As if Mexicans can cope with these things, are heavy enough and wise, although I know that’s stupid.

You Can’t Go Home Again And Chew Gum At The Same Time If You Won’t Listen To Me

1My mother died of complications following liposuction surgery.

1.1A mild heart attack; pneumonia; septicemia.

1.2Long-term alcoholism was the root cause.

2For a while, it seemed that charges would be brought against the surgeon, who was clearly negligent.

2.1But I had to bring them, and I was, at that time, living under my bed.

3I had a mental illness.

3.1I visited psychiatrists and took medication.

3.2At first, the diagnosis was endogenous depression, meaning one that is just in my nature.

3.3With time, I was changed to a personality disorder.

3.4Mine is a vulnerable personality, also termed inadequate.

4The nitty-gritty of the complaint was, dread.

4.1Everything I noticed hurt: the act of perception was like walking on a broken leg.

4.2If a lame bug struggled in the pool, that was me all over.

4.3Eating beer nuts was a mistake that could never be rectified.

•People didn’t like me.

•Furniture brought back memories.

•I couldn’t stop thinking.

•I felt best under my bed.

5I came out for the funeral, invigorated by just plain sorrow.

5.1I notified potential mourners, signed documents, signed checks.

5.2Because she had nothing suitable, I lent Mom the dress in which she was cremated.

5.3Everyone remarked on my good sense.

6. CONCRETE DETAIL

The dress was a blue velvet strapless with a zipper up the back. I’d only worn it once, to my Uncle Jerry’s fiftieth, held on the rooftop restaurant of some hotel. Because it was white-tie-and-tails, my mother wouldn’t go to that party. She said she could wear a bathing suit to the bank, for Christ’s sake, and King Jerry could kiss her ass.

On me, the dress swept the floor, on Mom it was calf-length: we were similar in girth but she much longer. I cut off the ribbon as being too festive. After some soul-searching, I neglected to have it dry-cleaned.

I helped to dress her, at my own insistence. People love each other in flesh and blood – my then conviction. I told the funeral people: she is my flesh and blood.

They gave her to us in the hospital gown, fastened with a sloppy bow over no underwear. I’d never seen Mom naked before, and I kept thinking, this is what I’ll look like when I’m fifty – even though my mother and I are not related, not the same race, and I was then going bald from eating nothing but Wonder Bread. I thought it over and over.

At the same time the lipoed thigh like a butchered seal. Curly peacock blue stitches sprouted from brackish gouges. Even when she was alive, it stank.

Mom looked wide-awake and pitifully frightened. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. I kept wanting to take her hand and swear I wouldn’t let them burn her.

I cried and cried. Whatever I thought, I cried. My mother’s friend Marta, who was helping me, kept saying, Let’s just get this over with. Please, let’s just get this over with.

I wouldn’t go in for the cremation. I waited outside in the car with my ex-boyfriend Stewart. It was a big station wagon which smelled of dogs. We listened to a call-in radio show about garbage disposal, and Stewart smoked. I wanted to smoke, but couldn’t, I was too anorexic. Smoking gave me the dry heaves.

On the radio show, they were discussing the comparative environmental effects of garbage incineration and landfill. Stew kept trying to catch my eye but I didn’t feel like laughing at anything that afternoon.

While we waited, a flight of Canada geese went by, very high up in their imperfect V. I kept hoping someone would shoot one down but of course they just flew away. Then Marta was knocking on the car window with the jar in her hand. When I rolled the window down, she said, Here’s your mother.

The jar had the manufacturer’s name stamped in the bottom. I gave it to Stewart and made him promise to throw it away. It’s now in his cellar with his fishing tackle.

He told me he opened it once, and the zipper from my dress was still there, curled among the ashes. It scared the shit out of me, he said. I thought it was her spine.

7So that’s how it was when my mother was obliterated.

8Leaving all her worldly goods to my brother Eddie.

9Who was on a drinking spree: for a long time he could not be found.

Initiating Event: The Phone Rings

It’s 3:00 A.M., two weeks after the cremation. I’m lying on the floor of my mother’s bedroom, clutching a stuffed rabbit. I’m still in the black linen dress I wore to the funeral. I have taken showers since, but with the black dress on. To dry, I sit in the bathroom on a towel for as long as it takes. I have all the free time in the world.

My nose is hot pink and my face chapped. There’s crust in my eyes and, on my lips, scabs.

The bedroom is white and high-ceilinged. It’s densely hung with contemporary art. There are up to three rows of frames on each wall, starting at knee level. Because my mother’s oldest friend is a painter who works in No. 2 pencil, there’s a lot of gray, and torn, grubby paper. Words are conspicuous:

SHIT VALENTINE

bawl

MYSTERY MEAT

My favorite piece is drawn with the gilt paper stars doled out in primary schools as congratulations. On unpainted canvas, they cluster and bulge, straying from the No. 2 pencil paths of constellations. Some stars are only half stuck, with their legs curling. Some obscenely mount their fellows. It’s nasty, and it’s genius; and when I think about it, I’m not in pain. I’ve been staring at the stars all day and night, this particular night.

and for two weeks long, I’ve been praying to my mother –

and to God to please kill me instead –

Mom can come back and burn me, in the same dress –

but Mom was an electrical charge in a hundred pounds of meat –

which never ever believed in God –

And I’ve thrown her clothes out on the lawn; and sketched dead families on the walls; and spent an hour carrying all the food in the kitchen to my room, where I’ve put it in a duffel bag, awaiting my decision on how to offer it in sacrifice –

and crying. That stuff. No point going into detail.

Two weeks of this. Lying on the braided Colonial rug, Mom’s bedroom. Stuffed rabbit, ears damp from chewing.

3:00 A.M.

The phone rings.

I crawled to the answerphone, and when I heard Eddie’s voice, I picked up hastily.

Hello! Hello?

Oh! Yeah . . . Chrysa?

Is it Eddie?

"I guess so. Isn’t that fucking depressing."

Then right off Eddie told me his scheme to turn our home into an institute for spiritual development.

"You just need the premises, and we’ve got premises in spades. In. Spades. And then you, what, you could be channeling Moses with a garden hose. These assholes are desperate. Yeah, like cancer victims. Heal yourself through spiritual hose treatment, Moses of Sinai said ‘It made my teeth whiter in just six weeks!’ Oh no, it’s the peppermint schnapps talking.

"I’ve got the guru already, you gotta love this guy. Can’t not love. We’re talking, people coming in their thousands, with their fucking thousands. Of thousands of dollars. I’m totally serious here, so just save the remarks, this is happening."

"Eddie. Did you hear about Mom?"

Yeah, he said and shut up.

Five minutes passed.

It was weird because he couldn’t see me, all sticky with my pitiful rabbit. It made me tongue-tied, so I just listened to the fuzz on the line getting louder and softer; the traffic in the background. You could hear he was in a phone booth.

At last he added, Sorry, I’m a little down tonight.

It’s . . . it’s good to hear your voice. I hiccuped and pinched the rabbit hard. Really.

So what did I get? I mean, sorry I’m such a pig, but you know I never had the normal feelings a son blah blah for a mother. I thought when she died, I got all excited, I was sitting there with the Fed Ex, NOW I’m gonna get the feelings! Roll on, normal feelings! But nothing happened so I throw up my hands. I’m fucked. Up.

You got everything.

What? Everything. What everything?

Well . . . I don’t think there’s much money.

"NO. That can’t happen. That shits the bed. How much not much?’

I was crying again now. I blubbered: You got the house.

Well, yeah, the house. I mean, you can hardly . . . that’s something. But not much money, could you be, like, any fucking less specific? Oh. I’m being hard on you, without any justification. That’s not my intention. So that’s all I’ve got to say.

There was more fuzz. At last Eddie said, I’ve got my guru with me.

There was more fuzz. Eddie said, Is there any cheese in the house? I, like, I don’t have a cheese problem any more but I still need lots of cheese. So if there isn’t any cheese, we’ll have to stop on the way.

I don’t know.

Right! We’ll stop. Don’t need that . . . the cheese scenario . . . okay, look, we’re at the Taco Bell, we’ll do the cheese thing, be at your side in fifteen minutes. Kapish?

And he hung up.

It wasn’t fifteen minutes but more like an hour before Eddie came. I had time to shower and change. I hid the rabbit in a clothes hamper. Then I stood in the courtyard for the longest time, expecting him.

I stood there for the longest time.

The moonlight reflected in the swimming pool was brighter than the actual moon. In its thin, chlorine light, everything looked like plastic. The masonry and plaster, tousled palms and ivy – and Remember III the mutt stood guard on the balcony, looking like a toy